Music Video Of the Week - September 4, 2020

"The Seeker"  by the Who  (Go to the link in the upper-right-hand corner.)

Music Video Of the Week - February 14, 2020

"My Wife" by the Who  (Go to the link in the upper-right-hand corner.) 

"The Rolling Stones Rock and Roll Circus" - Fifty Years

It was on this day in 1968 that the Rolling Stones filmed their television special "The Rolling Stones Rock and Roll Circus," an extravaganza of some of the best performers in sixties rock (and Yoko Ono) that would not be aired for twenty-eight years.

The Stones, like the Beatles, had not toured since 1966, and concluded as the Beatles had done that for as long as they were unable or unwilling to return to the concert stage, television was the most immediate vehicle on which to perform.  Mick Jagger came up with the idea of combining rock and roll performances with circus acts in tandem with Pete Townshend of the Who and Ronnie Lane of the Small Faces, whose respective bands were both to be part of the special.  (The Small Faces ultimately bowed out.)

Up to this point, rock and roll specials had had mixed results.  A year earlier, the Beatles had bombed with their Magical Mystery Tour film on the BBC, which led NBC in the United States to cancel its American airing, whereas Elvis Presley had just made a miraculous comeback with his Christmas special in America (relax, I'll get to that), which, in an ironic twist, aired on NBC.  The Stones' show, directed by Michael Lindsay-Hogg, was superior to the Beatles' movie and was also on par with Elvis' TV special in terms of excitement and energy.  Alas, a good deal of that energy did not come from the Stones themselves.

The TV-special film that finally got out is in fact an edited, one-hour document of the evening's best performances.  Jethro Tull begins the festivities with "Song For Jeffrey," from their debut album, and though Ian Anderson's vocal is the only live element of an otherwise mimed performance - they were the only band in "The Rolling Stones Rock and Roll Circus" that did not play live - Anderson's idiosyncratic stage persona makes their appearance memorable.  (The guitarist here is future Black Sabbath member Tony Iommi, a stand-in for Mick Abrahams, who had quit Tull and would be permanently replaced by Martin Barre.)  Then the Who (below) perform an explosive rendition of their mini-opera "A Quick One While He's Away" to an enthusiastic studio audience.

Marianne Faithfull, who performs Barry Mann and Gerry Goffin's "Something Better" to music on a backing tape, rises to the occasion with a heartfelt delivery, while a performance of "Ain't That a Lot of Love" from bluesman Taj Mahal (the only American on the bill) just plain rocks.  But not as much as a performance from the one-off supergroup John Lennon had assembled, the Dirty Mac (below), which was comprised of Lennon and Eric Clapton on guitars, Mitch Mitchell of the Jimi Hendrix Experience on drums, and the Stones' Keith Richards on bass.  Their rendition of Lennon's Beatles song "Yer Blues" is a blistering, crunchy rock performance, and their jam with Israeli violinist Ivry Gitlis is good.  Well, it could have been great, actually, if not for Yoko Ono crashing it and vocalizing all over the place.  In between all this are special circus acts, with the odd clown (including Stones bassist Bill Wyman in a clown suit) popping up here and there.

The Rolling Stones close the show with a massive set of songs from their latest LP release, Beggars Banquet, as well as "Jumpin' Jack Flash" and an early and pointed version of "You Can't Always Get What You Want," culminating with a fiery take on "Sympathy For the Devil."  (They say good night with a take on "Salt Of the Earth.")  But the set was deemed inferior to what had come before, with the Who's appearance remaining the best performance of the night.  The long delay in getting the show set up between acts - filming took fifteen hours into the following morning - had sapped the energy of the Stones, and the pathetic performance of a thoroughly stoned Brian Jones didn't help matters any.  When the Stones saw the result of their efforts, they shelved the whole project rather than risk disappointing their fans as much as the Beatles had with Magical Mystery Tour.  They didn't want to be seen being outdone by the Who on their own special.

Lindsay-Hogg returned to the project in the early nineties, but it wasn't until footage thought to be lost was discovered by director Michael Gochanour and producer Robin Klein, who were able to complete the film.  Shown at the 1996 New York Film Festival in October of that year, "The Rolling Stones Rock and Roll Circus" was aired in America on the cable music channel VH-1.

Watching it years after it was made, "The Rolling Stones Rock and Roll Circus" holds up rather well, capturing the essence and the headiness of late-sixties rock culture, at a time when the music was dominated by the British but still deeply rooted in black American blues.  (The circus acts featured have their charms too, and a little intrigue - top model Donyale Luna, who was in competition with Naomi Sims at the time for laying claim to being the first top black fashion model, served as the fire eater's assistant.)  As Rolling Stone writer David Dalton wrote in the film's opening titles, "The Rolling Stones Rock and Roll Circus" was from a time when it seemed that rock and roll would "inherit the earth."  In 1996, with most of the film's participants having become less relevant and rock itself having begun its long, steady post-grunge decline (still in progress in 2018, with VH-1 having since gone hip-hop), the spirit and the commitment the Rolling Stones and their guests had to the music came through (and they still do).

And yes, the Rolling Stones may have been sub-par compared to the Who or John Lennon, but, good grief, it's still the Stones as we know them - which, as Dave Marsh wrote, is no small thing.  Their set shows a band ready to get back on the road and prove themselves as the great live performers they knew they could be.  The Stones in fact were beginning their ascent to their peak of live performance, with their best and most exciting shows yet to come.  For all of their war-weariness, the Stones look determined to pick up where they left off after drug busts and studio isolation forced them off the concert stage and after their poorly received album Their Satanic Majesties Request cast doubt in their abilities.  Remember, the Stones made this film to support Beggars Banquet; they were more ready to rock than they realized. Janet Maslin of the New York Times summed up their fighting spirit by praising the "sleek young Stones in all their insolent glory presiding over this uneven but ripely nostalgic show."  But their fighting spirit would sadly exact a price - their decision to fire group founder Brian Jones, who would drown in his own swimming pool seven months later.

If the Stones are to be faulted for anything, perhaps it's for trying too hard. Ian Anderson offered this interesting observation years later: "I was there, and they were pretty good when they were rehearsing.  But they just did too much, and I think Mick Jagger sang himself out. When it came to the crunch, the Who just came in and did a few songs, did what they normally do and - crash, bang - the Stones, who had been rehearsing and working at it for ages, felt perhaps a little overshadowed by the energy of the Who."  But all of that work still seems noble when looking back from today, when so much pop music is not so much played as it is manufactured. "The Rolling Stones Rock and Roll Circus" represents an incredible period of music, live performance, and attitude that will likely never be replicated.

Music Video Of the Week - March 10, 2017

"Long Live Rock" by the Who (Go to the link in the upper-right-hand corner.)

The Who - Who's Next (1971)

Awesome!

That word is used way too much these days, but it accurately describes the Who's 1971 studio album.  Who's Next is a fragment of a much more ambitious project that Who guitarist Pete Townshend envisioned as a successor to their rock opera Tommy. Ironically, the majesty and power of Who's Next are greater than the Who could have anticipated; as far as I am concerned, this is the greatest rock album of all time not recorded by the Beatles.

Who's Next is the by-product of Lifehouse, a proposed rock opera about a polluted world in which music is banned and people survive in hermetically sealed environments controlled by the government. Most of the songs that made it onto Who's Next follow the themes of a denatured, destabilized civilization that bring to life all of the complexities of modernity - poverty, revolution, self-fulfillment - via music that is powerful, introspective, and innovative.

Who's Next explodes out of the gate with "Baba O'Riley," with its hypnotic synthesizer backdrop and and a driving performance from the band propelling the tale of a farmer and his family on a life-and-death exodus to the city.  The most notable quality is frontman Roger Daltrey's voice, now a full-throated roar that duels with Townshend's thunderous guitar; throughout the record, Daltrey's voice is as clear as it is ferocious, demonstrating a sense of control and power previously associated exclusively with another Roger - Family's Roger Chapman.  As on most of the album's songs, through, drummer Keith Moon leads the way with his major assaults.  Moon's beat provides the heavy rock underpinnings of the entire record, even on beautifully intense power ballads as the apocalyptic "Bargain" (again, with a commanding vocal from Daltrey) and the forlorn "Song Is Over," in which Townshend displays a tender humanity beneath the brutal surface of the music.  He even makes an acoustic guitar sound menacing on the former song, and keyboard session man Nicky Hopkins brings out the depth of the latter song.

Townshend's biggest innovation on Who's Next, though, is his use of electronic sounds with subtlety.  On "Going Mobile," a cheeky, free-wheeling salute to highway travel, Townshend backs his lackadaisical lead vocal with a wobbly guitar sound channeled through a synthesizer as Moon happily follows along with his heavy drumming pattern and cymbal clashes.  The wasted landscape suggested by the theme of human disregard for the planet makes it seem almost ironic. Even more tongue-in-cheek is bassist John Entwistle's contribution to Who's Next, "My Wife."  A song not intended for Lifehouse, "My Wife" tells a humorous tale of a man escaping his wife's rage based on suspicions of infidelity when he in fact spent a night in a drunk tank.  Backed by his own fluid bass playing (a quality that permeates throughout the album) and Townshend's churning guitar, Entwistle sings in a deadpan manner that highlights the absurdity of his song, especially when placed among Townshend's much more substantial ruminations.  It shows, as much as Moon's drumming, how vital each member of the band was to its chemistry.

The Who save their best for last here with two astonishing songs.  There's the raw, brutal honesty of "Behind Blue Eyes," a tale of self-loathing that switches from a brittle acoustic arrangement to a heavy electric one and back with agility.  But "Won't Get Fooled Again," a dismissal of revolutionary war as a solution to anything, is the masterpiece within a masterpiece, its pointed vocals, heavy guitars and piercing, thunderous bass and drums as punishing as an urban war zone and its pulsating synthesizer illustrating the mass confusion of a movement.  The transcendent scream from Daltrey and a final power chord from Townshend bring everything crashing down - "Meet the new boss, same the old boss."  The Who were an entirely different band entering the seventies, going from a Mod band full of youthful curiosity to a jaded pre-punk ensemble expressing the disillusionment of the generation Townshend was continuing to talk about.

The magic bus ride was over.

(This is my last Sunday record review for awhile; I will start writing record reviews again some time in the new year.) 

Music Video Of the Week - July 22, 2011

"Magic Bus" by the Who (Go to the link in the upper right hand corner.)